Social Services Does Not Exist: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

There is an intrinsic understanding throughout most of modern Western society that children are to be loved, nurtured, and protected throughout their childhoods by their parents. Parents are viewed as having a responsibility to ensure their child's happiness and welfare, as a necessary component to their healthy development into responsible and mature adults prepared to face the demands of society.

Needless to say, these sorts of parents tend to be the sort that would never be allowed to keep their children. At the very least neglectful parents would have to go through a few parenting sessions. But just as [[There Are No Therapists]] in fiction, there are also apparently no social services, either. The helpless kid is just going to have to grin and bear it - and because it's usually played for comedy rather than drama, they usually do. Sometimes they can escape to [[Staying with Friends]].

 

 

 

There's a simple reason for this with the consistently abusive parents - the abuse is a big part of the series or movie, and if Social Services did step in and take the kids away, they'd probably never let them go back.

 

If it's a [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|non-human species]] abusing its kids, it's [[Abusive Alien Parents]]. When social services ''do'' exist and are useless, it's the [[Department of Child Disservices]]. Often combined with [[Babysitter From Hell]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* Genma Saotome, father of [[Ranma ½|Ranma Saotome,]] is quite possibly the king of this trope—a selfish and casually abusive father whose antics are [[Hilariously Abusive Childhood|played for humor]] despite having essentially ruined his son's life at every possible opportunity.That Ranma hasn't cracked and murdered his dad by now, or at least beaten some sense into him, makes him a possible candidate for sainthood. Of course, Ranma being a martial artist, he's ''tried'' [[Calling the Old Man Out|beating sense into Genma's thick head]], but it never seems to take.

** Soun Tendo of the same series, while not nearly as much of a bastard as Genma, does almost ''nothing'' for his family other than occasionally bursting into tears, leaving his eldest daughter to run things. [[Fridge Logic|However; at the time the series takes place, Kasumi probably could legally have her younger siblings in her care as she's a legal adult]]...but how does she make any money?

** Principal Kuno would regularly shave off his son's hair on a whim (and in hair-trimmer vs. bokken duels) and generally humiliate him. The anime expands this by hinting at physical abuse (flashbacks from the episode where Kuno and the Principal's relationship is revealed include Kuno Senior taking Tatewaki's food while apparently berating him, forcing his head into a sink so he can shave him bald, and tying him up and dangling him from a tree). Already a fan of American culture, he also abandoned his family to live in Hawaii for several years. He came back even worse.

* Ryuunosuke and her father in ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]'', often considered the prototype for Ranma, although Ryuunosuke is an actual girl who was raised as a guy by a dad who refuses to recognize that she's a girl, mainly because he doesn't think a girl can take over his precious tea shop. This has left her with rather bad gender issues; she's fully aware she's a girl, and wants to be a "real" girl more than anything, but her father refuses to allow her to wear female clothes or even talk of herself as being a girl, nevermind try and get a boyfriend or try to act like a girl... in fact, because she's spent so long being brought up to act like a boy, she doesn't even know how to act like a girl.

** She also has an arranged marriage she doesn't want. Namely because her fiance Nagisa Shiowatara's father is just as much a loony as her own- upon having a son, rather than raise him as a boy, he deliberately raises him as a girl in order to match the "boy" that Ryuunosuke was raised to be. Unlike her, however, he does seem to know how to act like a guy, and he does realize that he's actually male, but he enjoys crossdressing. What makes things worse for her is that he possesses a number of ghostly powers, due to having died from eating sea urchin ice cream then coming back from the dead... though this also gives him some ghostly weaknesses, like being repelled by spirit wards. He's also, despite his [[Bishonen]] body, an expert sumo wrestler and quite capable of beating her in a fight.

* The parents of ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' are quite possibly the worst [[Jerkass]] parents in the world. Due to the father's laziness and the mother's gambling habits, Hayate has been the primary breadwinner in his house since the age of eight. In the very first chapter they steal sixteen-year-old Hayate's hard-earned paycheck, lose it all on pachinko, then sell their only son's organs to [[Yakuza|"some very nice people"]] to pay off their 156,804,000 yen ($1,467,504) debt. And just to top it off, this happens on ''Christmas Eve''. The mental scars left by his parents persist for a very, very long time.

** Heck, given that it's post-apocalyptic Japan, they ''could'' exist, but since it's, you know, after the apocalypse, they're really, ''really'' busy taking care of all the no doubt millions of now homeless children and new adoptions. Some people are bound to fall through the cracks...

* In ''[[Bleach]]'' Isshin Kurosaki regularly launches surprise assaults against his son Ichigo, claiming it as a form of martial arts training. He's far more likely to be on the receiving end of abuse from his daughter, but he did at one point rip off his shirt and tell them, "Come give your big, sexy daddy a hug!".

** To be fair, he's likely doing it to toughen them up without having to explain the reason, which is that soul eating monsters will try to kill them, just like they killed their mother, an experience that more or less utterly traumatized all three kids. He can't explain without bringing the painful experience to the forefront and causing them to lose it entirely, nor can he stop them from being targets.

* The ending of ''[[AIR]]'', where {{spoiler|a depressed Haruko pretty much abandons her dying (and mostly bedridden) foster child Misuzu to the care of the wandering stranger Yukito. Despite the fact that Misuzu is the center of what amounts to a child custody conflict, her guardian pretty much running away}}, no one notices or does anything but the main character, and he doesn't seek any help either.

** Although {{spoiler|Yukito's probably the only one that would understand what's going on, anyway. And she might not have been abandoned, there's the whole two timeline thing going}}.

** Misae/Mitsy in both versions. If Shin badmouths her or just happens to be in the wrong place in the wrong time, she whacks him. One example occurs in an episode where Hima kept trying to steal a magazine Misae was trying to read. After she discovers that Hima drew in it, what does she do? Does she scold Hima? Hell no! [[Kick the Dog|She hits Shin for no reason, even though he just got home.]]

* In ''[[Hell Girl|Hell Girl: The Cauldron of Three]]'', the protagonist Yuzuki's {{spoiler|mother was allowed to die of wasting illness untended because her dead husband was (wrongfully) despised for causing the accident in which he died, despite little Yuzuki begging for help from neighbors and hospitals. And then [[Dead All Along|allowed orphaned little Yuzuki to die alone, filling her soul with such hatred and denial that she became a candidate for following in Hell Girl's footsteps.]]}}

** Kogoro: the guy punches Conan in the skull for "playing" with the evidence, disrupting the case, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|being smarter than him]].

** Hattori's father has punched him hard enough to send him flying. In front of several police officers. Of course, it might be because he's their boss, but still, none of them seem to even blink.

** It's made worse, when Brock leaves his dozen siblings with newly found father, who is completely incompetent (come on, who would expect this guy to take care of 9 children). And it's later revealed that their mother {{spoiler|was alive all along and wandering around the world like her husband.}} It seems that leaving your children completely alone with just an older teenage brother in charge isn't considered a crime in the Pokemon world.

** Really the whole franchise. It's about capturing Monsters who have the ability to create near every element and snap an adult's spine with nary a wink, and that's not even getting into the legendaries (one of whom is basically God). Now remember the main character is 10 years old...

* Maron's parents from ''[[Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne]]'' emotionally scarred their daughter by regularly leaving her at home alone at night as a young girl because of their jobs. Before she was even ''in grade school'', they left to work overseas, and haven't contacted her since when the series begins. Miyako and her family might have been right across the hall to take care of her, but really, who the hell thought it was okay for a girl that young to be living in an apartment alone? By the time the series begins, Maron is a [[Broken Bird]] incapable of comprehending "love" because "no one taught [her] about it" and spends most of her time pretending not to be depressed and [[Kaitou|stealing valuable pieces of art]] in the name of [[God]]. It gets worse when you start thinking about how Miyako's father, who knows all about Maron's situation and sees her on almost a daily basis, is ''a police officer...''

* If not for this trope, ''[[Kanamemo]]'' would've been a pretty darned short series/manga.

** Jonouchi, at least in the manga, should've never been kept with his alcoholic, gambling-addicted, and potentially abusive father. He seems sane and optimistic enough, but [[Fridge Horror|one has to wonder]] [[Loser Son of Loser Dad|about his theme of gambling and chance cards...]]

** In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'' Jaden/Judai gets kidnapped for three days by an insane richman and nobody does anything about it. And there's numerous missing students, none of whom get searched for (no official investigation) and once some of them return there's no legal investigation about it.

* Literally half the cast of ''[[Madoka Magica]]'' is living without parents or guardians. They're in ''middle school''. In fact, the only notable family is titular character's. {{spoiler|Not that they can help her daughter much anyway.}}

* In ''[[Grave of the Fireflies]]'', Seita and his younger sister Setsuko are left homeless after the destruction of their home by Allied bombing and the death of their mother. Their aunt takes them in for a short while, but after leaving her house neither the police or doctors are willing to help them and they must fend for themselves, stealing food to survive and living in an abandoned bomb shelter by a river.

 

== Comic Books ==

* In ''[[Johnny the Homicidal Maniac]]'', Johnny is the only person even ''trying'' to take care of Squee, and he's a [[Serial Killer]].

{{quote|They aren't bad people. They love me. They don't really mean it when they tell me to get kidnapped.}}

** After Billy became [[Captain Marvel]], he managed to get around the subject by simply transforming into the Captain, putting on a fancy suit, and pretending to be his own uncle. It doesn't hurt that in his Captain Marvel form, Billy resembles his dad, so it's easy to pass off.

** Averted at least once when a social worker came to Wayne Manor to ask questions about Jason Todd's death and left vowing to save the other children (Tim and Cassie) living there. Then played straight when nothing came of it (because it's ''[[Fiction 500|Bruce Wayne]]'').

* Justified in ''[[Runaways]]'': No one ever realized that Chase was being abused because his mad scientist father found a method of beating him that left no marks.

** Also subverted later, after {{spoiler|the Pride were all killed off. No sooner had the kids escaped, than Captain America found them and put them all in separate foster homes. The kids all promptly escaped and regrouped, because they missed each other and found social services ill-equipt to help them get over the trauma of having one's super-villain parents being killed by Biblical giants.}}

* Deliberately averted in [[Stan Lee]]'s work for [[Marvel Comics]]: he disliked the idea of superheroes having juvenile [[sidekick]]s, saying that in the real world they'd be hauled before a judge for imperiling the safety of a minor. It didn't stop him from creating [[Fantastic Four|Johnny Storm]] and [[Spider-Man|Peter Parker]], both of whom were teenagers when they started their superhero careers.

 

== Film ==

* The Bucket family in ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'' is dirt-poor to begin with. After Mr Bucket loses his job, things get worse, but no one seems to notice the four starving grandparents confined to a single bed or that Charlie is looking a lot thinner and doesn't have the energy to go outside at recess.

* [[Roald Dahl]] stories like ''[[James and the Giant Peach]]'' and ''[[Matilda (novel)|Matilda]]''. As you can see from this, he likes this trope.

* In keeping with the time period they were set/written in, the orphan protagonists of ''[[Horatio Alger, Jr.]]'' books tend to be left to their own devices to get ahead in the world. Charities exist, but are overstretched and can do no more than provide minimal food and shelter in bad weather for the children.

* ''[[The Boxcar Children]]'' was written in the 1920s. Social services as we know it really didn't exist, with the exception of orphanages that focused on caring for the children they had, not tracking down runaways.

* Averted in [[The Pale King]]. {{spoiler|Toni}} and her mother simply avoid them by drifting around the country. This lasts until {{spoiler|the mother is murdered by her boyfriend.}}

* ''[[In Death]]'': The good news is that this trope is averted in this series. The bad news is that the [[Department of Child Disservices]] trope is played straight instead, as Eve Dallas had to discover for herself as a child.

* Played with by [[Ephraim Kishon]]: They do exist, but the young social worker Eva is clearly overstrained caring for Yemenite refugee Saadya Shabatai, his big family and his antics, and at the end, [[Inverted Trope|he ends up comforting and consulting her.]]

 

* Pretty much any parent on ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'' falls into this trope, even the well meaning Michael. It can range from simply not listening or paying attention to their children, to openly ranking their children from favorite to least favorite, to adopting a Korean child to make their children jealous, to adopting a child to screw their rivals, to setting their kids up to take the fall for various felonies.

* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'': Okay, so it's many years ago and it might have been necessary but you would have thought that some nice person in a state somewhere would have been worried about the two young Winchester boys moving around everywhere and acting too old for their ages. Especially as their father is often drunk/neglectful/absent. And ''especially'' as their mother died when they both were very young. Although the frequent moves and constant use of fake IDs probably helped keep Child Services from ever catching up.

* Played with in ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'', where social services do exist, but the system is far from perfect and it suffers from many limitations such as dwindling budget, lack of manpower, and outdated/incorrect data. Many times the detectives stumble across a case that social services really should have picked up on, but the victims unfortunately fall through the cracks in the system.

* In ''[[Falling Skies]]'', obviously the larger system has broken down, but once they take the mind-controlling harnesses off the kids backs there doesn't seem to be much effort to interview them about their experiences nor offer them counseling for what was obviously a very difficult experience. One is pretty much left to wander around the compound freely with a dazed expression.

* In ''[[Shameless]]'' (US version) social services do exist but they seem to have largely given up on the Gallagher family. The parents consist of an absentee mother and an alcoholic father and the kids have been taken away by child services in the past. However, it never seemed to stick and now Fiona makes sure that they stay under Child Services' radar.

 

* Children and ''[[Silent Hill]]'' do not mix well. Alessa was emotionally and physically abused by basically everyone in her life, Angela was repeatedly raped by her father, Laura is a (possibly homeless) orphan whose best chance for adoption was a terminally ill, bed-ridden woman who died a few weeks later, the children at Wish House were systematically abused for brainwashing purposes, and the Shepard, Holloway, Fitch and Bartlett families {{spoiler|murder one of their children each generation}}. Needless to say (but it will be said anyway) social services is nowhere to be seen.

* In ''[[The Sims]] 1'', the Social Worker would come to pick up a baby who was starving, but wouldn't do anything about a school-age kid who was orphaned. In ''The Sims 2'', they shaped up somewhat, but they became a little over-responsive. They can take a child if they get a bad grade in school, so it's not much of an improvement. Luckily, Sims 3 seems to have fixed all of the problems with the social workers

* Subverted in ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]''. In "Final Fantasy: Episode Zero", Lightning is actually given the option of accepting help from the government when her mother dies—the fact that she decided to raise Serah on her own anyway serves to underline [[Mama Bear|her personality]]. The trope is further twisted when Serah is engaged to Snow: With a strong parental figure during her formative years she turned out just fine--''Lightning'' is the one with baggage.

* When Miles Edgeworth's father was murdered in ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]'', he was almost immediately adopted by Manfred von Karma, {{spoiler|the guy who killed his father in the first place.}} Did no one object to a ten-year-old being taken off to Germany by a man he'd never met who wasn't even an American citizen?

* ''[[Rule of Rose]]'': It's set in rural English countryside in the 1930's, but it's still pretty amazing that nobody in the nearby villages noticed that the orphanage had gone [[Lord of the Flies]] and all the adults had disappeared.

 

 

 

== Web Original ==

* In the real world, the motions would have been set for [[The Nostalgia Critic]] to have been taken away from his parents as soon as he'd shown the picture of them tearing him apart.

** Nobody did anything about [[Ask That Guy With The Glasses]] being forced to do sexual favors for his gym teacher either.

** However, this trope is usually necessary for Bart and Lisa (and even Maggie), in order for them to display the full extent of their [[Badass]] and [[Breakout Character]], as opposed to being stereotypical children.

* In ''[[Family Guy]]'', Peter and Lois don't start out so bad. But they degenerate into complete jerkasses, with Peter even stating he doesn't care for the kids that much. And Meg is treated absolutely appallingly in many episodes. In "Dial Meg For Murder" Peter lassos her, drags her down the stairs and prepares to brand her with a ''red hot poker.'' Turns out she's already been branded by the mayor, not that Peter cares. He also practices riding a bronco on Chris' back. Lois is more one for emotional neglect, only showing the slightest affection for her kids when it suits her. Even Stewie doesn't get off scot free, often left on his own for long periods of time, or with no company other than the family dog.

** This coming from the mother who reads PH.D Lipschitz books religiously. "How could this have happened?! We're always so careful with the kids!"

*** When they actually meet the author, he's left alone with Tommy and Chuckie and breaks down in tears because he has no idea what to do with them. And yet Didi continues to heavily rely on his advice for the smallest things, even how to feed her son on his first birthday, ignoring the advice of other parents with older children who have gone through what Tommy has.

* Sari Sumdac of ''[[Transformers Animated]]''. Despite being the daughter of a very prominent businessman, no one in the bureaucracy has ever picked up on the fact that she ''legally doesn't exist''. Moreover, when her father goes missing, not only is there no attempt to provide her with an adult guardian, but she's ''thrown out of her home'' by the business's new CEO. It's okay, though, because she moves in with a bunch of giant alien robots with no legal status on Earth. Yeaaaah.

* Just how the hell did Mr. and Mrs. Turner in ''The [[Fairly Oddparents]]'' leave their son in the hands of a sadistically evil babysitter and be oblivious to the fact that she's, well, evil? And they still neglect him when home.

* In ''[[Madeline]]: Lost in Paris'', the antagonist had apparently been lying to the courts for awhile to keep the other girls locked up in the lace factory. Kinda surprising considering that, you know, it's ''FRANCE''....

* Pretty much every adult in ''[[South Park]]'' is an idiot who barely supervise their kids at all. Well, except for Butters' family, who are just ''[[Jerkass|completely]] [[Abusive Parents|abusive]] assholes'' who have viciously beat him on at least one occasion.

** Averted in a Slappy Squirrel cartoon where Slappy has gone insane and Skippy is removed from her custody.

* ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'' is pretty bad - Arnold's grandmother and grandfather are incredibly weird, but Social Services never check up - although in the movie, his grandfather mentions that if they did step in, he and grandma would go into a nursing home and Arnold would go to a foster home (potentially because of their weirdness). However, Arnold really isn't that bad, given that his grandparents can care for him. Helga, meanwhile, is probably worse, given that her dad is mentally abusive (about as close to [[Abusive Parents]] as you can get while still being kid-friendly) and her mom is an alcoholic, constantly depressed and unaware of her surroundings, has no drivers license and falls asleep in weird places after making "smoothies".

** Plus, Stoop Kid. A kid who has apparently ''never'' left his stoop and appears to be in his teens. He's well known around the neighbourhood...why didn't nobody call CPS? If there's anyone who needed CPS the most in this series, it's Stoop Kid. Helga may have [[Abusive Parents]] and Arnold may have [[Parental Abandonment]], but Helga at ''least'' has access to food (most of the time) and Arnold at least has grandparents who love him very much and are able to provide for him.

*** Stoop Kid does at least have food, clothing, furniture, and even a ''television'' on the stoop, presumably provided by the residents of the building.

 

== Real Life ==

** While it was never as bad as David Pelzer, after he was taken away by social services (and kept in the SAME TOWN as he lived before), one of his brothers named Richard became the scapegoat. Sure he was never outright denied food or told to eat diapers, but it's rather obvious Richard ''really'' was abused. Even one of his school-friends saw his mother beat him ''in the front doorway of the house'' and yet nobody ever seemed to tell social services...nor did they seem to come back and check up on her.

* More [[Truth in Television]] in the many places where social services technically exist, but are completely ineffective for one reason or another (ie, too swamped with cases, don't have enough resources/time to handle ''everyone'', not enough funding), and the population recognizes this to the point where they may as well not exist.

** Japan's foster care system is tiny and pretty shit, largely because most potential foster parents consider it such an insult to be subject to government oversight that they drop the whole thing, and back before there was oversight (late forties/early fifties) the abuse problems were truly horrific. Historically they had a flourishing fostering system, but that was a way for rich people to get excess offspring out of the way while training up their heirs. Some of the old fostering villages take orphans for the government these days, but not nearly enough.

** In at least some cases, kids might be too afraid of ''CPS'' what with its relatively bad track record (perhaps undeserved) and general laziness.

** Considering that CPS in many states had such poor oversight until recently (and even then, it's not what it should be), it's not surprise. This is a classic case of trying to legislate a problem away, and is often considered a thankless, unrewarding job by many state employees who are not in it.

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